What are the best Wayland compositors?

KWin offers an assortment of window effects, such as wobbly windows and window shadows/glow. See More

Type:Compositing

Decorations:SSD

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Top Pro

Window effects

Top Con

Dependent on some KDE libraries

This makes stand-alone KWin somewhat inconvenient to set up. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful interface

KWin has an assortment of attractive desktop effects, creating a rather beautiful interface. See More

Top Con

Some effects such as present windows are slow and jerky

Some of KWins effects can be a bit slow or jerky, resulting in an uneven fluidness. See More

Top Pro

Integrated compositing manager

KWin has built-in compositing with options on how it performs that can be changed by the user in the settings. See More

Top Pro

Changeable window borders, effects

Top Pro

NVIDIA EGL Stream support

It can work on NVIDIA video cards with proprietary drivers. See More

Enlightenment offers a beautiful interface with eye candy: it can be themed easily to the user's liking and includes an optional compositor. See More

Enlightenment

Top Pro

Beautiful interface

Top Con

Not many themes for enlightenment

... and most of them are not really beautiful. For example, a Dark-One on e16 has a simple and clean look and is really beautiful (if you like dark themes). See More

Specs

License:BSD

Programming Language:C

Type:stacking, tiling

Widget Toolkit:Elementary

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Top Pro

Virtual desktop previews

Enlightenment allows for virtual desktop previews within its desktop widget for switching desktops within its thumbnails. See More

Top Con

Backlight and bluetooth can be hard to set up

There seem to be issues with some DRM laptops. See More

Top Pro

Fast and good with battery life

Great for laptops. See More

Top Con

Unstable

Top Pro

Minimal hardware requirements

Top Con

Non-tiling

Overlaps and spaces between windows are both pointless. See More

Top Pro

Lightning fast

Startup of e is lightning fast -- as it is during working with the WM. See More

Top Pro

Easy on ressources

Doesn't use much RAM and doesn't hog your CPU. See More

Top Pro

No programming experience required to configure the environment

Configuring the environment of Enlightenment is done through a UI, so no prior knowledge of coding languages or editing of config files is needed. See More

Top Pro

Quick mouse-driven menus

Enlightenments menu is easily and quickly accessible by left-clicking anywhere on the desktop. See More

Top Pro

Lots of themes available

There is a large selection of themes available for the Enlightenment window manager, meaning that customization to one's preference is very straight-forward. See More

The usage of a plugin system allows for a lot of customisability. See More

Wayfire

Top Pro

Plugin approach

Top Con

No window buttons

Window buttons are provided by the decoration plugin in the latest version. See More

ResoluteBaoshengDadi's Experience

Fairly lightweight considering the extensive customisation options, and a lot of eye candy. The documentation is very clear as well. See More

Specs

License:MIT

The blur plugin makes this compositor look nice. See More

Type:stacking

Decorations:CSD/SSD

Top Pro

Nice blur feature

CreativeBoann's Experience

Solid compositor, responsive community. See More

Top Pro

Plugin approach

The usage of a plugin system allows for a lot of customisability. See More

Unity8

Top Pro

Consistent GUIs

Specs

License:GPLv3, LGPLv3

One of the best and underappreciated features ever, HUD allows you to search and activate menus based on their name and what they do, instead of having to navigate them. See More

Type:stacking

Widget Toolkit:QT

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Top Pro

HUD (search and use menus with keyboard)

Top Pro

Easy access launcher

That is always accessible on the left side. See More

Top Pro

Vertical panels work well with multiple monitors

Unity's vertical panels work perfectly with multiple monitors. See More

Top Pro

Excellent touch screen compatibility

Unity provides a unified interface for mobile devices and pc. See More

waybox

Labwc

Cardboard

Cagebreak

Programming Language:Rust

WaRVk

VulkanCompositor

Wayland compositor building library focused on standards. Best one around. See More

Type:stacking

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Sway

Top Pro

Uses WLROOTS

Top Con

Sway does not guarantee support for NVIDIA drivers.

It works for the most of configurations, but it is not guaranteed; Those who use Sway on NVIDIA do not get any technical support. Even further, requirement to run Sway with "--my-next-gpu-wont-be-nvidia" is rather humiliating. See More

RealisticProphasis's Experience

Intuitive and sane. It's the first tiling WM I've put serious time into, and mostly it just works. Configuration is a snap thanks to the extensive man pages and the well-commented default config file. Instant config reloads mean you can see the results of your edits immediately. Only downside is imperfect NVidia support but that's their fault, buy AMD. See More

Specs

License:MIT

Programming Language:C

Type:Tiling

Decorations:SSD

Top Pro

Compatible with the i3 window manager

Is designed as a wayland rework of the i3 window manager and a lot of the config options for i3 work with Sway. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support custom Desktop environments (Kde, xfce, mate, etc)

Since it is a desktop environment itself... See More

HarmoniousJievaras's Experience

Sway is incompatible with most of graphic cards (Nvidia). it requires to use nouveau (parody of driver) or AMD/intel graphics (parody of graphic card) See More

Top Pro

Supports gaps

Just like i3-gaps, Sway supports gaps between windows. See More

Top Con

Difficult configuration

This has largely (completely as far as I know) been cleaned up with the first official release (1.0) See More

cosmo's Experience

Sway comes packed with everything I need and expect as a previous i3 user, also including screen locking and taskbars by default! It's a truly lovely experience. See More

Top Pro

Tiling

Its interface does not consume a lot of screen space. See More

Top Pro

Simplicity and configurability

Everything is plain and simple, and you get to configure and script almost anything. See More

Top Pro

Status bars through built-in Swaybar

Sway comes with information bars built-in through its Swaybar feature. It can be easily configured to show time, weather, notifications, and more, just like i3bar and i3status. See More

Top Pro

Screen locking through built-in Swaylock

Sway can lock the screen after you've been away for awhile or on demand with a key binding. This feature, called Swaylock, comes built-in and functions similarly to i3lock. See More